


Once Upon A Time In Mexico: Los Héroes

by Storyshark2005



Series: Once Upon A Time In Mexico [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 18:57:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11258937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storyshark2005/pseuds/Storyshark2005
Summary: The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word "limens", which means, "threshold."It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer.Jessica and Kilgrave doing the 'hero thing' in Ciudad Juárez. Missing girls, drugs, penance and redemption. Part One of a Series. TBC.





	Once Upon A Time In Mexico: Los Héroes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goodboots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboots/gifts).



> A hypothetical departure from show canon, from the WWTD moment, when Jessica asks Trish the question- “What would you do if you could harness Kilgrave’s powers for good?” Jessica “makes it right”, using an alternative method. 
> 
> Dedicated to goodboots, because I fell in love with her series, On the Road[ https://archiveofourown.org/series/736308 ]. And with the idea that, if you catch a character early, they are not beyond saving. 
> 
> Opening block quote is from the documentary, 'Cartel Land'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

> _“What can I say? We know we do harm with all the drugs that go there. But what are we going to do? We come from poverty. If we were doing well, we would be like you. Traveling the world or doing good clean jobs, like you guys. But if we start paying attention to our hearts, then we’ll get screwed over. We will do this as long as God allows it. As long as He allows it, we will make drugs. And every day we make more, because this is not going to end, right?”_

 - _ _Meth cook, Michoacán, Mexico__

 

_‘Cartel Land’_

 

* * *

 

Jessica’s halfway through her omelet when she sees the headline on a CNN news crawl. Kilgrave is fidgeting in the plastic vinyl seat across from her, somehow still not used to cheap Best Western dining furniture, despite it being the hundredth one he might have sat in this year. They’re in Colby, Kansas, self-proclaimed “Oasis on the Plains”, and both of them are eager to get the hell out this town, full of shitty fast-food chains and two-star hotels. These are mostly Kilgrave’s complaints, and Jessica tells him that he’s lucky she didn’t pull into the Econo Lodge across from the Walmart Supercenter, and the adjacent Quizno’s.

_8 MORE WOMEN ABDUCTED IN JUÁREZ THIS WEEK...187 WOMEN ABDUCTED SO FAR THIS YEAR...1,161 WOMEN TAKEN FROM CHIHUAHUA IN LAST 12 MONTHS..._

Jessica puts down her fork, and Kilgrave follows her eyes to the TV over the breakfast bar behind him.

He sighs, twisting back around to his coffee and toast.

“I hate Mexican food.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I don't suppose I have a say in this?”

“Nope. Finish your coffee. We’ve got a twelve hour drive.”

Jessica throws their bags into the trunk of the ‘98 Impala they leased back in Kansas City. She drops behind the wheel and instructs Kilgrave to consult Wikipedia for a briefing on Cartel activity in Juárez. The frown lines deepen around Kilgrave’s mouth the longer his voice peppers them with information on Sinaloa, the Knights Templar, Los Zetas, and the Juárez Cartel. The six murders a day in this city, every day.

“You really want to die in Mexico?”

“Good a place as any, don’t you think?”

Kilgrave’s eyes harden, and he grabs for his sunglasses, a pair of Tom Ford’s that she’d let him ply off an idiotic frat boy who’d slapped her ass in a bar in Berkeley.

The kid might also have punched himself in the face, maybe broken his own nose, but she’d had her back turned. So. She really couldn’t say.

“No. I really don’t think so.”

She glances over at him, slumped deep into his seat, rumpled in a white button-down and backlit by the setting New Mexican sun. The air conditioning had blown out 300 miles ago so the windows were down, desert wind carding wildly through his hair. He needed a shave and a haircut.

And he’s never looked better, more human, than right now.

All these unreasonable thoughts. The road can drive you a little mad, she thinks.

  

* * *

 

“ _Why did you come back?”_

This is the beginning.  
  
She brings them Chinese, and the bottle of sufentanil is still sealed in a small glass bottle in her pocket. She can see the spark of hope in his eyes as she lays out the ground rules, lays out the plan to make them heroes. She’s still not sure this is the right path, eating chow mein, sitting across the table from him in this nightmarish reconstruction of her childhood home.

This is her ultimatum. That she will stand by his side, point him in the right direction, and he will try- try to learn empathy, sympathy, pity, and courage- he will try to become the person he might have been. Before he was twisted into a thing that twisted people into things.

She wants to save him. _You want to save everyone,_ she hears Trish’s voice. But it’s true, and he is no exception. She thinks that maybe if she saves him, teaches him to save lives- maybe it’ll be enough.

But that’s getting a little close to doing the moral maths. Saving one person doesn’t un-kill another. Doesn’t un-kill her mother, her father, her brother.

But she’s got to try. It’s all down to her, now.

 

* * *

 

She realizes she’s immune to his powers as they’re driving through Indianapolis, on their way to St. Louis, about a week in. He’s got his phone open to Google Maps, and Robot-Google woman is telling them to stay on the highway, even though all of the road signs are pointing out a detour around construction. Robot-Google lady is shouting at Jessica to stay the course, but Kilgrave has opened up Waze, just to make sure.

“Get off at this next exit, you want to get onto 65, it’ll take us north around this mess-”

“Google-lady says I should stay on this road-”

“ _Take it,_ exit 112A, right here-” He’s pointing ahead 400 yards and closing, she should take it, but she doesn’t trust him, Google-lady has never steered her wrong-

They pass Exit 112A.

The road noise is loud on the rough pavement, and Jessica almost rear-ends a green Toyota Sienna with the revelation that slams into her chest.

“Did you just-”

“How did you-”

“I don’t-”

“Slow down, you’re going to get us killed-”

This time, she complies.

Just to make sure though, she speeds up just before a red light, and then slams on the brakes. She’s floored, a rush of adrenaline crashes through her veins.

“ _Jesus_ -” Kilgrave’s fingers are pressed white against the dashboard.  

Her heart pounds out of her chest, she laughs out loud.

“Tell me to do something, just something stupid, something small.” 

He sighs, rolls his eyes.  

“Try not to be such a bitch, Jessica.”

“Shut the fuck up, I’m serious, give me an order.”

“Jessica, honk the horn twice.”

She gives him the finger instead. She can’t believe it, what the  _fuck_ -

“How long have you known? You did know, didn’t you-”

He frowns, phone hanging limply from one hand, the other braced in the window frame.

“After the accident, after you walked away. I didn’t remember at first, but things started to come back to me. I remember shouting at you to come back. You didn’t even look at me.”

Her heart still hasn’t slowed down, she thinks back to the crash, a place to which she had tried to avoid letting her thoughts stray too close.

He reaches forward, clips his phone into the dash mount they’d bought from a gas station back in Pennsylvania. Lets Google Maps Robot-Lady take the directions over. Leans his seat way back, an arm slung over his eyes.

“Looks like you don’t need me anymore.”

She smiles, sly and bright.

“Ooohhh Kevin. This just got a whole lot more interesting.”

He grimaces. “I can’t believe I actually missed you.”

She punches him hard, in the shoulder, eliciting a yelp.

“Give me another command. This is fun.”

 

* * *

 

They spend the night north of the border, in El Paso at a Days Inn. She buys a bottle of cheap tequila at the liquor store across the street, and they study a folder full of cases within the last 6 months, printed off at the library before dinner. There’s only a small table with a coffee maker on it, not enough room to work, so they push the beds together and spread the pictures and names out, girls with dark hair, dark eyes, and beautiful smiles.

Viviana- 16. Taken from a gravel lot she was crossing to get from her factory job to a bus stop. She was found two days later in the lot with her hands cut off. She had 16 stab wounds in her torso, and she was decapitated. Viviana’s father José hosted a demonstration in his neighborhood, and 8000 people showed up for _Justicia para Viviana_. José conducted his own investigation, hiring two former police officers to help. They fled the city after receiving death threats, most likely from higher-ups in the police force. The case was never solved. 

Lilia- 14. Taken from a sidewalk, somewhere between her high school and her home. Her body turned up weeks later, dumped next to a sewage canal. Her hands were tied behind her back with duct tape.  She had sustained broken knees, a broken nose, multiple stab wounds. She was raped by several different men. No suspects were arrested.

Esmeralda- 16. Disappeared after a bus dropped her off around midnight, after her shift at a _maquiladora._ Her body was never found, but Jessica reads an interview with her father from a newspaper,

 

 

> _The police will not look, the government will not look, so we take shovels to the desert every day to look for her._  
> 
>  

Paloma- 19. Disappeared as she was walking to her factory job, never showed up for work that day. A week later, her body turned up, mutilated. The hospital called her mother to identify the remains. Jessica reads aloud the mother’s words from another newspaper article, titled _No es mi hija,_

 

 

> _I was in the hospital, drugged because I had a breakdown. They showed me the body of my daughter, but I don’t know if it really was her body. I don’t know if the body I buried in San Rafael Cemetery is my daughter, or if they buried an empty casket. I was so upset...I do not remember much from those weeks._  
> 
>  

Jessica reads aloud all of the case summaries, all of the article clippings. She refills her glass twice, her throat burning, and reads about case after case of these forgotten girls. Almost none of them investigated by police, and not one conviction in the lot.

Kilgrave is unusually quiet, and he doesn’t touch the bottle of tequila. He listens to the sound of her voice, staring at the pictures, and when she demands an explanation _Why are you so quiet? This cutting a little close to home?_ he slips under the bedsheets, faces the wall, and turns off his lamp. Jessica keeps needling him for awhile, but soon the alcohol throbs fuzzily at her temples, beckoning her to her own mattress.  

She gathers up the pictures, tosses them into their folder and leaves them on top of the microwave. She shucks off her jeans and crawls under the covers that feel exactly like every other hotel they’ve been in the past year, rough and cheap. 

She dreams that she’s in the desert, digging holes, thousands and thousands of them, looking for her daughter. Her mother, her father. The girl she used to be, before the accident.  

_No es mi hija. No es mi hija._

 

* * *

 

In the morning, they cross South, over the Bridge of the Americas. Jessica looks down, expecting to see a ribbon of water, but the Rio Grande is a dry cement gulch streaked with railroad tracks, brown dirt, and gray asphalt. They spend two hours crossing two miles, the brake pedal flutters under Jessica’s foot like a nervous heartbeat.

Border security officers stop a white car in front of them, pull the driver out into the street while black dogs crawl into the doors and trunk of the car, sniffing, searching. One of them gestures for Jessica to roll her window down, and she’s not surprised when Kilgrave leans over to answer his probing questions, _Who are you, why are you crossing the border today, how long will you be staying_ , etc. It’s been so long since his powers worked on _her_ , and the irony of seeing his powers at work coming as a _relief-_ this never escapes her.

What does surprise her, however, is when he answers the officer’s questions in fluent Spanish.

They pass through the fencing and barbed wire with a wave from the armed guards. She glances over at him, both their eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.

“You speak fucking Spanish? And didn’t think to tell me?”

He smiles, wanly with only a touch of triumph that he had kept something from her.

“There are just a few things you don’t know about me, Jessica Jones.”

 

* * *

 

The odd thing about his power is, she remembers loving him. _You love me, Jessica Jones. More than anything._ And she had, a few hours at a time. There was always the small corner of her mind hidden away from him, revolted by every action. But she remembers vividly how her soul ached for him. Neurons firing in her head _You want him, you love him,_ oh how you needed him.

And she hates him, can never forgive the carving he made in her brain, the invasion of her mind. She's not sure how she can save him, feeling like this inside all of the time.

He looks different now. Smaller, now that the fog of his compulsion was lifted forever. She studies him across the table of the corner booth she’d chosen. Cantina music barking from a tinny speaker on the ceiling. She studies the tiny freckles dusting his cheekbones, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He looks older, tired.

She thinks how she is the only person in the world left who knows anything about him, besides the victims he left in a bloody wake.

He thumbs the condensation off of his Modelo.

“D’you think we’ll find any of them?”

“Yeah, Kevin. I hope so.”

His nose wrinkles, he scoffs. “Would you not-”

“I’ll call you whatever I want to.”

“Right. Fine.”

She’s almost disappointed at how easily he’s defeated these days, like kicking a puppy. Albeit a puppy who used to try and kill you and all your friends-

She almost misses the muttered, “Whatever you want, Jessie...” hidden behind a swig of beer.

She snorts, finishes her whiskey, signals for another.

“We’ll find them. Trust me.”

His eyes darken and his chin dips down. “I don’t even know what that word means.”

“Yeah. Well. Maybe we’ll figure it out together.”

 

* * *

 

There are pink crosses, everywhere. Tacked to walls, painted onto concrete, or carried by women with melting, dead faces. Everyone they talk to has known somebody who has been killed by the cartel, kidnapped, raped, or all of the above. Mother, sister, daughter, niece, grandchild.

They start off with a woman going by the name Maria, who used to work for the cartels. Trish had a reporter contact who’d done a story on the kidnappings ten years ago, and used Maria as an unnamed source.

“It’s blood-sport. These guys just get bored.”

“Bored?”

“When you have enough money, a certain amount of money, it loses all meaning. They can only drive so many cars, sleep with so many prostitutes, buy so many houses and pretty things. They get bored, so they collect dogs for fighting. Then dogs aren’t exciting enough for them. So...”

“So they kidnap girls and to rape and torture? Jesus fuck...and the police down here, they-”

“They help dump the bodies. They’re on the cartel’s payroll. They’ll be no help to you down here.”

Jessica feels Kilgrave at her shoulder, leaning across the table.

“How high up does this corruption go?”

She lets out a cackle. “ _Chicos_ ! This city is built on their money- this is the largest money laundering operation in the world- you’re in the middle of a _rat’s nest, querido_ . They’re all _rats,_ every one of them.”

Maria sits back, lights a cigarette. “Sometimes I think, there’s no hope left for this country. That maybe all we need is a good dictator, hm? Someone to kick open the door and burn the house down. Burn it all down, and all of us with it. Then maybe....hnh. Maybe we will have a chance.”

 

* * *

 

They get a list from Maria of girls taken in the last month. Angelina Garcia’s mother lives in a slum built into the hills on the north-west periphery of the city, Diaz Ordaz Colonia. It looks like a bomb went off. Houses are patched together with pressed wood sheets, cement blocks, sheets of corrugated metal, and pieces of plastic.

Angelina’s been missing for a week now, since a couple days after her 18th birthday. Nobody’s seen her since that night.

“She says, the neighbors saw a taxi drive down the street around midnight. Taxi’s aren’t common down here. But...they didn’t get a plate-”

“Ask her if they saw the driver, or anybody in the cab.”

“Yeah I did, they didn’t see anybody.”

“Ask her about social media. Did Angelina  have a Facebook account?”

Kilgrave babbles some Spanish. She recognizes the word _Facebook._

“Yeah, she did. Does.”

“Does Angelina have a laptop?”

“...No... but she had a phone...it’s gone. Along with...some clothes..she-” They exchange a few words, he looks sweaty and exhausted.

“She packed a bag. The cab is the best lead. We should go through her social accounts, could be a stalker.”

“From the cartel.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Mrs. Garcia looks back and forth between them, frowning. Her eyes are red and puffy, and mostly she just looks broken in two.

She looks intensely at Kilgrave, asks him something, Jessica only catches the word _triste_ . Sad. He answers lowly, she hears _no, senora_ but the rest she doesn't catch. She can only utter a soft _gracias_ , _lo siento_ as they walk back to the car.

“What was that? That last thing she asked you?” Jessica stares at Kilgrave over the roof of the Impala.

“She wanted to know if we’d lost a daughter too.”

“What’d you say?” The wind picks up dust and bits of sand, throws it into her eyes and nostrils.

“No.”

“Sounded like more than that.”

He drops down, back into the car.

“That was all it was.”

 

* * *

 

They spend the evening back at the hotel downtown, surfing Angelina’s facebook and email accounts.  Jessica had a bottle of tequila on the nightstand between them, along with two glasses. No ice.

Kilgrave’s long legs were crossed, stretched out on the bed in front of him as he frowned down at the laptop, his shirt sticking to his chest. The yellowed window unit was coughing pathetically, unable to keep the oppressive heat at bay. 

“This country is torture. Not only is it disgustingly hot, there’s dust everywhere, no bloody air-conditioning, and nobody has any ice for the drinks- which, if you had them, would make you sick anyway.  If I weren’t so overheated I’d complain about the lack of hot showers-”

“You are such a pre-Madonna.”

“What?”

“I said, you’re a pre-Madonna. It means you’re a diva, like Madonna-”

“The phrase is _prima - donna,_ two words. It’s Italian for _fuck’s sake_ -”

“Whatever. Found anything yet?”

“Nothing. Unless you'd consider poor taste in music suspicious. What kind of a name is _21 Pilots_ anyway?”

“They're alright. Better than _Coldplay_.”

“Ugh.”

They both type awhile in silence.

“I think I need reading glasses.”

"Of course you do. You're old.”

“And you're a bitch. At least I can get glasses to correct my problem.”

A few months ago she would have reared back, hackles and a fist raised. But he's smirking over at her in good humor, and besides. He's right.

She shakes her head, takes a pull of tequila in case she’s tempted to smile.

“Fuck off, Kevin.”

“I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Oh, I dunno, maybe because I’m the only one who’ll put up with you on their own volition? And you’re lonely, and pathetic?”

She feels like a cunt as soon as the words leave her mouth. She’s always been a piece of shit.

He slams his laptop shut, grabs a towel and escapes to the bathroom. She hears water running through the pipes.

By the time he gets out of the shower, she’s turned off the lights and crawled into bed, facing the wall. She hears him pull on underwear and a t-shirt, he only owns the one so she knows it’s the one he procured at a David Bowie concert when he was 16, after he talked his way into front row tickets. It's faded and soft and still fits him. It’s one of her favorite stories about Kevin from his days on the streets of London. Before New York.

She licks stale tequila off her teeth and listens to him turn over a few times, his breath slow and even. He’s not sleeping, only pretending.

She wants to whisper _I’m sorry_ or _I didn’t mean it_ but they both know she meant what she said, and that it was true, and that there’s still too much broken between them for her to apologize. The scales hadn’t balanced out, not by a long shot.

She still dreams of bloody elevators, hears Hope Schlottman’s voice in her nightmares.

_Make it right, Jones. Make it right._

 

* * *

 

He used to tell her what to eat, what music she liked, what she wanted to wear. Now she can barely choke down spaghetti, Italian was ruined for her.

The sex though, that was a different animal entirely. He was vain here, knew he had a gift better exploited with questions rather than orders. _Where should I touch you, Do you want my hands or my mouth, faster or slower, where do you want me, how do you want me?_ She'd answered of course, truthfully.

She’d been used to quick drunken fucks in bathrooms, strange apartments, something like a release of pent up frustration and maybe masochistic punishment. Nobody had ever asked her questions like that. Nobody had been sober enough to care. Her choice in men had been blurry faced and nameless. As Trish had said, _Jesus, Jessica, you sure know how to pick ‘em._

She's not naive, she knows what Stockholm Syndrome is. Her time with him was still a violation, still rape- still a fucked up coerced fantasy. But she’d learned what she liked.

She wonders if she could have figured that out on her own, without him. If she would have found a decent enough person to ever ask those questions. If she would have been able to answer.

 

* * *

 

They find Angelina.

She doesn't want to go home.

She’s living on the top floor of the _Hotel Verde_ , directly across the street from the District Attorney's office. The first floor has a few dirty rooms that all appeared to be empty. The second floor houses a brothel. The third floor is where the cartel members package the methamphetamine. They find Angelina on the fourth floor, living with her boyfriend, José Carlo Ramirez, aka Caballo. Maria has advised them to wear bullet-proof vests if they go anywhere near this hornet’s nest, and they both acquiesce.

Kilgrave has the  _narcos_ kneeling facing the wall, their guns piled across the room, but he’s still watching the door nervously, 80 feet isn’t far enough from an AK-47 to stay comfortable. He orders one of them to the doorway to keep watch, give them a signal if he sees anybody coming.

Angelina’s sitting on a plastic orange chair, faced away from a big screen TV and an XBox, staring daggers at Jessica. Her eyes are lined in dark black makeup, she’s wearing a tight turquoise top and a short metallic skirt. Her heels look like knife points. Angelina speaks very good english, and she knows _all_ the four and five letter words.

“It’s _my choice_ \- I’m not going back there.”

“You don’t know what they do to girls like you-”

“Carlo isn’t like that. He’s my boyfriend, he _loves_ me. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. _Puta fea..._ ”

Jessica swears, her fist compresses, white and pink.

“This isn’t Romeo and Juliet, these are _bad_ people, and they will _kill you_. As soon as they get bored, or they get tired of you, they will kill you, Angelina. You’re coming with us. We’re taking you home.”

“I’m not going back there. My grandfather’s a pervert and my mother doesn’t do a fucking thing about it. There’s no future there, no hope. Carlo knows people, people in the music industry he can introduce me to.”

Jessica can’t keep the cynical scoff from her mouth. “So what, he told you he’s gonna make you a big star?”

“You know something, _puta_ ?  You’re so fucking arrogant. You think you can come to my country, with an American passport and a Google translate app on your goddamn phone- and you can understand _my_ people better than I can. I know what I’m doing, _gringa_. Go home. You’re not wanted here.”

“Jesus Christ, you wanna DIE HERE, you stupid fucking-”

“Jessica-” Kilgrave’s voice is edged in warning. “We should go.”

She meets his eyes, watches him glance nervously out the windows.

“I don't like this, we need to get out of here."

She smirks. “Bad feeling, Kenobi?”

He doesn’t smile back. “Unlike you, I can’t survive a four story fall. We need to go.”

She bites her cheek, steps closer. “I need you to talk to her.”

She can see his darkened sweat-damp hair sticking to the top of his collar, smell the mix of salt and cologne.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. We don’t have time for this.”

“No, we don’t-” 

“Make her come with us.” 

His eyebrows shoot up. “You’ve been telling me for _months_ that I can’t use my power on innocent people unless they’re in danger, unless it’s an emergency-”

“What do you think this is?” She hisses, flinches when she sees one of the cartel members move an elbow. Kilgrave screams a corrective, and they freeze in acquiescence. He turns back to her.

“You’ve seen where she comes from. You want to send her back to her poedephile grandfather? She wasn’t taken, she _chose_ this. There are other girls we can save, others who _want_ to be saved.”

“She was _coerced-”_

“You don’t know that-”

“She’s _eighteen_ -”

“Which in this country makes her a consenting adult-”

“And who the FUCK are you to talk about _consent_?” Her words ring like a shot through the plaster walled rooms. Her eyebrows raise, challenging him. “Hm?”

Kilgrave’s mouth shuts in a hard line. His voice lowers.

“You want me to use my powers to _coerce_ this girl, who has specifically stated that she lives in an abusive home- you want me to force her to get in the car with us- to go back against her will?”

Jessica fights down her breathing, her pounding heart and the heat in her temples.

“Ask her. About the abuse. Make sure she isn’t lying.”

Kilgrave shakes his head but turns back to Angelina. He asks her the question, _Tell the Truth, Angelina_ , in that flat, awful tone of his.

“When I was little. He’s weak and sick now. But he still stares at me, says things to me.”

Jessica rounds back on him. “So she’s safe. Do your thing.”

“Are you even hearing yourself? Besides, she’ll just run away again as soon as we leave.”

“Are you refusing to do it?”

There are a few tense beats of silence, all Jessica can hear is her own heart, his breath puffing through his nose, the sound of his cotton shirt rustling against the kevlar and nylon vest. His head tilts back, toward the ceiling, and she knows she’s won.

“Angelina, don’t speak. Stand up, and follow us out to the car. You want to come with us. Now.”

Angelina frowns, before she stands and the anxiety melts from her features. Her black heels click on the cracked and broken tile as they make their way down the hotel stairs, Kilgrave barking the necessary orders at passers by.

They drive back to the Garcia home in silence. Angelina’s head rests against the window, bouncing dully as the car crawls over the rough, jutted rocks leading back to Diaz Ordaz Colonia. Jessica watches as Angelina crawls from the car in a haze, stumbles over to the embrace of her mother, tears down both their faces. They don’t see the grandfather.

The sun is dipping below the horizon when they reach downtown Juarez again. Jessica stops the car, throws it in park. She doesn’t reach for the door handle, and Kilgrave waits for her, waits for her cue to move or speak.

She can feel a bitter, black thing crawling up her throat, something that’s been building since they got to this dirty, horrible city. Something rotten and corrupt that’s infected her, soaked into her skin.

“What, so you have a fucking moral compass now? Who’d you force to give you one of those?”

He stares through the windshield, jaw clenched tightly.

“Thought I was getting one from you.”

Something snaps, sharp and burning. She’s out of the car, slamming the door, but he’s around to her side quickly, grabbing her elbow.

“Jessica-” It’s that tone he used to lace his orders with, sharp and authoritative. She hates it, throws his hand roughly from her elbow.

“You know what? You can find somewhere else to sleep tonight, I can’t be around you right now.”

“Oh come on, you want me to sleep in some random hotel tonight, or force my way into somebody’s house?”

“You did it for years, what’s another night _Kevin_?” She spits his name.

“Why are you punishing me? Because I disagreed with you?”

“Yes, actually. We agreed when we started this. _I_ give the orders, _I_ call the shots. Those are the rules, and you follow them unless you want me to hunt you down and kill you.”

“You were breaking your own rules.”

“I’m the boss. I do whatever I think is right.”

He shakes his head, he’s fucking _laughing_ at her, the smug sonuvabitch.

“You know, Jessica, a compass that doesn’t point North is just a toy. You can’t just decide which way is up and which is down-”

Her fist swings around before she can even register the thought, and she barely pulls back enough to keep from killing him, just barely. She feels his cheek bone crack under her knuckle, a sick sound, and he collapses to his knees, cradling his face.

“CHRIST, you _broke_ my face-”

“Calm down, you’re fine-” but she hears the waver in her own voice. She kneels down, brushes his hands away, grips his chin to tilt his head to the side, catching the yellow glare of the street-light.

She sighs. It’s pretty bad. “Come on. We’d better get some ice on that.”

“There’s no ice in Mexico.”

They drive to a pharmacy and Jessica buys ibuprofen, a couple bottles of water, and a box of instant cold packs. She stands over Kilgrave, the passenger door open at her back, cracking open one of the water bottles while he presses the pack over his cheek and eye with a hiss. She shakes a few pills into his free hand, waits, hands him the bottle to wash them down.

He sighs tiredly, hands her back the bottle, mutters a _thanks_.

She gently presses the door closed, walks around to the driver’s side, heeling her hands into the sockets of her eyes, willing them to shut out her thoughts, her guilt, the blackness in her throat and chest.

She’s finally ready, and drops back into the driver’s seat, turns the engine over to a soft hum.

His seat is tilted back, he’s still pressing the pack gingerly to his face.

She clears her throat, pulls around the parking lot, puts her turn signal on.

“I’m, uh. Sorry. I shouldn’t have punched you.”

She can see his frown behind the cold pack, confused.

“Allright...”

She clears her throat, spots the hotel a few blocks down.

“You want to pick up some food before we get back? We haven’t tried the Mexican-Chinese thing yet.”

His frown deepens. “So...’s fine, me staying in the room tonight...”

“Yes. Jesus.”

“Oh. Ok.”

There’s an awkward pause.

He scoots forward, tilting his seat up a few clicks.

“Is anything even open?” he asks hopefully.

She glances at the clock. 10:45pm. Slows down in front of a neon sign illuminating a red and yellow dragon.

“Looks like _Shangri La_ is open till midnight-”

“ _Shangri La?_ That’s a fictitious Tibetan myth, nothing to do with _China_ -”

She laughs out loud, for the first time in what feels like _months_. Years, maybe.

“Shutup and find me a goddamn menu. Figure out how to say _Kung Pow_ in Spanish. You’re ordering.”

He pulls the cold pack from his cheek to fish out his phone, the screen illuminates his face, already swollen and puffy.

“Yes, darling.”

She allows the endearment. Just for tonight.

 

* * *

 

 


End file.
